Expected price trend on French wines

Peter Creasey

Peter Creasey

Peter Creasey
Given the threat of new tariffs on French wines, I wonder what we as consumers can expect in the way of price escalation(s) if the tariffs go into effect.

. . . . . Pete
 
As our favorite Tariff-in-Chief says, "We'll see what happens".

Might be a good time to drink down the cellar, or check out Spain & Italy.
 
The Euro, since its inception, has gone from lows of being worth around 90 cents to highs of being worth around $1.60, fluctuations that make tariff threats seem, if not miniscule, less threatening. Wine prices have fluctuated in response to currency fluctuation, but never proportionally. There are too many other elements to the marketplace.

Tariffs are stupid policy, usually, for a lot of reasons. And they can warp prices. But a lot of things in the world warp prices.
 
righto. and when the euro goes up in relation to the dollar, u.s. wine prices go up equally. when the euro falls, the prices don't drop nearly so much.
 
Not much I'd guess. The dollar is already quite strong against the Euro and the damage of Brexit will be mostly to the UK, or what will be left of it. But, unlike chicken soup, it can't help the Euro.
 
originally posted by robert ames:
righto. and when the euro goes up in relation to the dollar, u.s. wine prices go up equally. when the euro falls, the prices don't drop nearly so much.
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I disagree. US domestic prices are capped in the middle segments ($5-15 or maybe $5-20 per 750ml equivalent) by wholesale oligopolies and big retail buyers. Overall, grape prices (and to a lesser extent wine) prices react most strongly to over/under supply (real and perceived). Average price of wine sold has been rising steadily, but that is due to trading up, not price increases of individual wines.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
Not much I'd guess. The dollar is already quite strong against the Euro and the damage of Brexit will be mostly to the UK, or what will be left of it. But, unlike chicken soup, it can't help the Euro.
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Indeed. Brexit is getting the headlines. Some other things are getting coverage, some not, all of them roiling ForEx: Hong Kong, Yuan, German yield curve, Trump escalating China trade war, etc. I wish I knew where it was going. I'll be reading Lucretius instead.
 
originally posted by Christian Miller (CMM):
originally posted by robert ames:
righto. and when the euro goes up in relation to the dollar, u.s. wine prices go up equally. when the euro falls, the prices don't drop nearly so much.
Click to expand...

I disagree. US domestic prices are capped in the middle segments ($5-15 or maybe $5-20 per 750ml equivalent) by wholesale oligopolies and big retail buyers. Overall, grape prices (and to a lesser extent wine) prices react most strongly to over/under supply (real and perceived). Average price of wine sold has been rising steadily, but that is due to trading up, not price increases of individual wines.
Click to expand...

That's not been my experience. For the most part, I'm buying the same wines, they just keep going up in price. You may mean this in more of a big picture way and not applied to consumers like myself.
 
originally posted by VLM:
originally posted by Christian Miller (CMM):
originally posted by robert ames:
righto. and when the euro goes up in relation to the dollar, u.s. wine prices go up equally. when the euro falls, the prices don't drop nearly so much.
Click to expand...

I disagree. US domestic prices are capped in the middle segments ($5-15 or maybe $5-20 per 750ml equivalent) by wholesale oligopolies and big retail buyers. Overall, grape prices (and to a lesser extent wine) prices react most strongly to over/under supply (real and perceived). Average price of wine sold has been rising steadily, but that is due to trading up, not price increases of individual wines.
Click to expand...

That's not been my experience. For the most part, I'm buying the same wines, they just keep going up in price. You may mean this in more of a big picture way and not applied to consumers like myself.
Click to expand...

Yes, as in overall wine industry. Even in the big picture, above $20 there are a significant number of wines that have increased price. True also under $5, but that's been driven by cost. In the $5-15 segment, there have been very few sustained price increases over the past few years, at least in scan data.
 
originally posted by Tristan Welles:
I wish I knew where it was going. I'll be reading Lucretius instead.
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What’s a good wine pairing with de rerum natura? If we can assume Lucretius was Roman aristocracy, perhaps he was drinking ancient Sangiovese while working on his epic?
 
originally posted by Todd Abrams:
originally posted by Tristan Welles:
I wish I knew where it was going. I'll be reading Lucretius instead.
Click to expand...

What’s a good wine pairing with de rerum natura? If we can assume Lucretius was Roman aristocracy, perhaps he was drinking ancient Sangiovese while working on his epic?
Click to expand...

A jolly question. The assumption that Lucretius was almost certainly Roman upper class is valid. But we don't need much speculation on the subject -- we know that the Villa of the Papyri* was both a center of Epicureanism / Lucretius and that they drank a lot of Falernian wine there. CQFD!

(*surely one of the most transcendent accidents in western philosophy was the Villa of the Papyri being buried by a volcano.)
 
I thought almost nothing was known about Lucretius' life other than some connection with the senator to whom he dedicated Dr Rarum Natura. But I don't know much about him. What's the basis for guessing he was an aristocrat?
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I thought almost nothing was known about Lucretius' life other than some connection with the senator to whom he dedicated Dr Rarum Natura [sic]. But I don't know much about him. What's the basis for guessing he was an aristocrat?
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De rerum natura
 
I read the Greenblatt book and don't remember what he said. What does he conclude? I have to say that Renaissance Self-Fashioning and the book on Hamlet and Purgatio are stunning books, but the stuff that makes him bucks are well-written but forgettable.
 
jonathan--sorry, i'd have to go re-read that section myself. i do have the book, but not the time right now to check it out. i'm off to the woods to my number one best chanterelle spot. . . .

but i don't think lucretius station in life rose to that of aristocracy.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I read the Greenblatt book and don't remember what he said. What does he conclude? I have to say that Renaissance Self-Fashioning and the book on Hamlet and Purgatio are stunning books, but the stuff that makes him bucks are well-written but forgettable.
Click to expand...

Ultimately I think Greenblatt's book on Lucretius / Poggio a failure. I desperately wanted to like it, but thought the fragmented strands simply didn't come together. At many points it seems as if he really wanted to write a book about Valla -- but the 'detective' angle was pitched to him as a money maker. At other points his assertion that Poggio was a closet atheist (I am traveling and don't have my copy to hand, so I might be generalizing a bit) I find frankly ludicrous. Here Greenblatt spins quite a bit of cotton candy from very little sugar.

I did like his Shakespeare book.

As for Lucretius there are five main reasons we assume he we of an upper class family, despite knowing net to nothing about his own life:

1-his family name
2-details from the text of rerum which indicate stylistic and thematic connections with an upper class life
3-the dedicatee
4-the association with the Villa Papyri, which dovetails with 5:
5-both Epircureanism and Stoicism had very limited appeal outside of the senatorial class. This doesn't mean a low born person or slave couldn't write on the subject, but combined with the philological study of the text, the indication seems to strongly indicate an upper class background. We don't necessarily have to assume this to be 'aristocratic' -- especially in the late Republic -- Cicero is the obvious example.

ps-- just as I was about to post this, I had a memory of a contemporary author citing Lucretius in a way to bolster the idea he was of an upper class family, but can't remember the actual citation.

pps--not to pile on, but The Swerve was poorly edited, too.
 
I certainly do not mean to defend Greenblatt's book. It was a popularizing essay. But is the idea that Lucretius was an atheist really that doubtful. All I know is de Rerum Natura, but it would be the first thing I would conclude from that.
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
I certainly do not mean to defend Greenblatt's book. It was a popularizing essay. But is the idea that Lucretius was an atheist really that doubtful. All I know is de Rerum Natura, but it would be the first thing I would conclude from that.
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My apologies, I wasn't specific enough. Greenblatt -- and everybody else -- is of course on firm ground when reading Lucretius and coming to the conclusion Lucretius was what we would term an atheist.

Greenblatt wrote The Swerve in the form of a sort of double history; that of philosophy of rerum Natura and of its 'rediscovery' by the secular humanist, Poggio Bracciolini. It is Greenblatt's, um, swerve into the subject of Bracciolini, his renaissance court life, his princely support (I forget the specific Italian prince) and the possibility of Bracciolini's atheism that I think highly problematic.
 
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